


Empathy/Sympathy

by Setback



Category: Sentinels of the Multiverse (Card Game)
Genre: F/M, Haven't listened to the Letters Page, I also realize that Pete's name is Pete and not Peter, I'm going to keep saying Peter though, I've spared us all by not calling it that, Secondhand account of the Dark Mind fight that I've mostly forgotten, The file on my computer is called Total Eclipse of the Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 03:42:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14276163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Setback/pseuds/Setback
Summary: After the fight with Dark Mind, Peter doesn't have the capacity to care.Mostly introspective from his and Mr. Fixer's point of view because I don't know how to write properly.





	Empathy/Sympathy

Peter is trapped within himself from the moment he and Amanda go up against Dark Mind. He wants to scream when the scion takes her memories, but his heart is already gone and he feels nothing. A stranger is in control of his body from that point on - and he knows that that isn’t true, that he’s still Peter but it doesn’t feel that way when everything catches in his throat and prevents him from expressing anything at all.

Without his compassion, he’s nothing. A hollowed out shell of who he used to be, staring blankly at the collateral damage left from the fight, none of it physical. Just the changes in who he and Amanda are in the aftermath. She doesn’t know who he is and he doesn’t care.

But he wants to. He knows that he loves her but he feels nothing at all when he looks at her. Everything he feels about her, about anything, is trapped underneath the surface of whatever Dark Mind had done to them.

He disappears after that, searching for…something, anything that can make him feel again. Enough of himself remains that he wants to fix what has been done to him - he just can’t bring himself to care whether or not he’s actually successful in the endeavor. 

Megalopolis holds the Freedom Five. The city where he’d received his powers and taken on the mantle of Setback because he’d wanted to change the world for the better.

He nearly collapses in the desert searching for the Tomb of Anubis - half remembering a brief conversation with Ra about his powers being restored in the temple. Because his luck wasn’t nearly as powerful as his compassion.

He doesn’t go home. Knows well enough that his family would be devastated to see him in such a catatonic state. 

Slim finds him at some point, having followed the trail of destruction that his poor luck left in his wake - easier to find when he doesn’t stay behind to help clean up the mess. “C’mon kid, let’s get you back to Rook City.”

Peter follows because he doesn’t have anywhere else to go and he can’t care enough to not want anyone to see him this way.

Empty.

Darkwatch keeps a careful eye on him when he returns. Amanda still doesn’t know who he is, questions why they need a new guy around who’s more trouble than he’s worth. There isn’t enough of him left to say that she used to love his brand of trouble. The words would fall on deaf ears anyhow. So he does what he’s told, a maelstrom of bad luck and blank eyes. 

Dark Mind should have taken his memories too. His mind knows what his heart doesn’t. Knows that he loves Amanda and that he should be heartbroken that she doesn’t remember him.

Mr. Fixer and Harpy become the glue that holds the team together. Slim finds some newspaper clippings and an album from the team’s original days - gathers them all together to flip through the photographs in the spirit of bonding and lets Harpy describe the images to him while he slides his fingers over the raised ink written on the back when Peter’s monotone breaks something inside of him that he didn’t know he had left.

No reaction from either of them to the first photo of them as a team - Peter’s hair pointed every which way from the after effects of having been pumped full of shock rounds during a brief understanding, though Harpy giggles and nudges Amanda who shrugs - having a full recollection of the event minus Peter’s presence at the scene.

December 1st, 2016. Peter confused mistletoe with poison ivy - hilarity ensues first (itchy) kiss.

He doesn’t mention that he’s hoping the pictures jar something in either Amanda or Peter, that he wants them to return to themselves. He’d never admit it aloud but Darkwatch was a family, just the same as the Freedom Five - a little shattered and hastily put back together, but still a family. They cared for one another fiercely and if he didn’t have to worry about keeping them together in Rook City, he’d hunt down Dark Mind himself and force the cretin to put them back the right way.

On a good day, Peter’s optimism was a minor nuisance but replacing it with nothing at all is unnerving. Slim could admit that the kid was the light of the team, broken as it was. He was the only one of them that maintained that the world could be a good place, that people themselves were inherently good. And now the light was drained out of him. Now there weren’t any good days.

But he was fighting. 

It didn’t escape Slim’s notice when Peter would occasionally jerk like a puppet - a horribly visceral reaction to the photos. Hands curling in his lap before going still. And, damn, if Slim isn’t proud of that. Their Peter was fighting whatever the Hell had been done to him during the fight. He was still there, somewhere inside of himself and trying to find a way out. There was just too much of him to be completely eradicated. 

Sometimes he’d have the guide the kid back to his room in the safe house that doubled as the Darkwatch headquarters, a firm hand on his shoulder in the middle of the night because Peter was trying to disappear while everyone was asleep. Because he didn’t care enough to stay and was prone to wandering when he wasn’t anchored the group emotionally. 

“The blind leading the blind, kid,” he comments one such night, guiding them both back down the halls. 

“But I’m not-“

“Not physically, but you are blind. I’m not going to appeal to you, I know it won’t work but we’re here. When you came along…we needed you a lot more than you needed us. Helped out when you could’ve been in Megalopolis with the big shots.” Slim shakes his head. They hadn’t taken as much advantage of that as they should have, didn’t appreciate Peter and his luck or lack thereof until much later. “Now you need us whether you can acknowledge that or not. Stick around, kid. We’re gonna get the two of you patched up eventually. Be a lot faster if Faye was around but we can handle something like this.”

They had to handle it. Slim doesn’t know if the team could survive the two of them remaining the way they were now, ponders over the possibility as he sits Peter down in the kitchen and pours them two glasses of bourbon. Last time he checked the kid wasn’t big on drinking but there were exceptions to every rule and tonight seemed like a good a time as any to lay down what he’d been putting together in his own head over liquor. He wasn’t supposed to be the caring one on the team, briefly wonders how Peter managed to have that much love for an entire group of people. Made him miss what they’d lost in the fight even more. The kid was overflowing with love. For his team, the people he considered friends, even random people he passed on the streets.

It’s not anything that he’s cut out for these days and he’s painfully aware that he can’t fill the kid’s shoes until he gets fixed up.

Which is starting to look more and more hopeless as he looks into it. Slim can’t attest to being the most magically inclined being, but he knows people who can and even they’re left scratching their heads as he drags Pete around the globe. Dark Mind had laid down some serious mojo that even the experts are questioning if there’s anything to be done at all. It isn’t like he’s going to get better on his own either - not by the looks of it anyway.

Darkwatch isn’t going to last much longer, Slim figures. The team doesn’t have the same cohesion that it had in the old days. Harpy is trying her best to fill the void left by Nightmist but it isn’t fair to her, Amanda is operating as if everything’s fine - as she’s want to do when the only missing person on the team in her mind is Faye and she knows what happened to her, Peter’s shambling around like he’s the zombie, and Slim is just a bitter old man trying to hold them together when he has trouble keeping himself in the right frame of mind to work with a team. And Rook City suffers for it. The Wraith picks up a lot of their slack, having known Pete from the start of his heroic beginnings and understanding that they depended a lot on his boundless optimism to get through the day. 

Slim doesn’t forget that Amanda’s suffering just as much, but in reality…the problem lies in Peter. If his memories had been taken instead they could form a new connection. As is, it’s a lot harder for the two of them to bond when Pete’s incapable of caring about any of them.

He has to wonder how the kid’s holding up some days. Everyone who knows Pete is wondering the same thing.

It’s nearly a year of wondering before they get any answers. A year of haphazard missions that could have gone better if things weren’t the way they ended up and a year of watching two people who’d found one another operate like strangers.

Slim has to give it to Faultless. The psion put up a fight that had them on the ropes, but without their help he doesn’t think that either Amanda or Pete would have been put right again. After they’d managed to free him from Oblivaeon’s control, Faultless had seen just how unbalanced they were and restored the two to their natural states.

No one can fault Peter for crying as soon as he sets sights on Amanda. She cries too, but later - when she’s alone with Pete and they’re wrapped up in one another as if they’re afraid to lose one another again. Because they are. 

The old albums are pulled out again so they can take a look at them and reminisce properly this time. So much of their lives are documented through photos they’ve taken and newspaper clippings minus the missing year - Slim makes sure of that. The first time Pete sees grainy footage of himself walking blank eyed towards a target, uncaring of the collateral damage caused by his bad luck he retreats to his room and hides out until Amanda is able to convince him that it wasn’t his fault.

They don’t talk about the missing year as a team because they don’t have to. But Slim catches the two of them whispering in the middle of the night - consoling one another and taking solace that they didn’t go through what had happened alone. He leaves them after, smiling to himself because everything’s right again. This is something that they can move past with enough time to heal. It’s going to be okay again.

Pete disappears not long after coming back to himself, Amanda at his side as he knocks on a door in Springfield, Missouri and smiles tearfully as his mom answers the door and they come together in a tearful embrace that makes Amanda shift uncomfortably before she’s offered the same affection. He hadn’t seen his family in a year and it shows in the wild gesturing and wide smiles as he catches up with his sisters and congratulates them on their various accomplishments. She notes that he doesn’t mention why he hadn’t seen them in the past year aside from a vague explanation about being caught up in a mission. 

Not that she can fault him for keeping quiet when she sees how much they all care for one another. It would have broken their hearts to see Pete so…empty. And truth be told it still breaks hers, not that she would admit it to anyone under threat of death.


End file.
